"Don't you trouble ter swear, my dear." She spoke to him in melting tones. "I'd nivir suffer one o' they other women ter say a word agen' you. I felt sure you'd come home agen. An' now we'll live together all our lives, an' we'll be easy. Reckon you've saved?"

"Not a penny." He was truthful. "Have you?"

"I'ain't saved much." She appeared downcast. "I bin reckonin' on you. Every year I bought a good Christmas dinner in case you come back. An' thet cost money, fer I bought the best an' I nivir grudged."

"It's all jolly good-the finest I ever tasted. But, look here-Beetrus. What happened to all the other dinners? Christmas Eves when I didn't come home. Took you a long time to eat the lot, didn't it?"

"Me eat it!" She was shrill. "Why, I nivir touched a mouthful. Fust traveler thet come ter the door Christmas mornin' I give un the lot. 'Cept the crackers. I hands them ter the childern when I goos down the village. An' my frock." She puckered together the lap of her skirt. "I on'y put this on first time terday. Bran'-new frock ivery Christmas Eve. The old one I gives ter the fust woman what calls at the door."

"Tramps, you mean?" he asked her. "Yes, travelers, poor souls. Folks what 'ain't got a good home like you an' me. "Tis my house. I've allus kept it. "Tis mine ter keep."

"Yours!"

She laughed in his face. "You nivir quite liked it bein' my house, an' not yours, did you, George? But Pierpoints they saved, an' Pelhams they nivir had a penny ter fly wi'."

"But it's my clock," he said.

"Yes; 'tis your clock-an' the on'y thing in the place what didn't come from

my side o' the fambly. You ain't cross, are you?" She peered at him; he was smoking again. "I'm forced ter brag of my fambly. I allus did."

"Yes, you allus did. No, I'm not cross, but I'm dead tired, to tell you the truth."

He yawned, and she watched him despondently.

""Tis s' early." Her eyes sought the clock. "Christmas Eve an' our fust together fer twenty year. But ef we goos ter bed now we can be about betimes in the mornin'."

"That's it. Christmas morning, too." He arose instantly and, going to the door, took from the hook, where she had hung them before dinner, his overcoat and cap.

She instantly pounced. She came up behind. Her strong arms were round him.

"Where be gooin'?"

"Don't strangle a chap! To lock up the shed."

"Shed!" She was softly derisive, and she held him more firmly. "Ain't nothin' in it. I brung in the wood. Coal's in the cupboard under the stairs." "But there's garden tools. Better lock the place. Safer," he said. "Now you don't step acrost this threshold ter-night." She pulled him to the fire.

"All right," he yawned again. "Have your own way, for I'm dead tired."

"Pore chap!" She stroked his face softly. "Then you come up ter bed. I've put you in the front room, fer I knowed thet when you did come off the sea, arter a long journey, you'd be dead beat. Twenty Christmas Eves I've spread the best sheets on the front-room bed, an' twenty Christmas mornin's I've took 'em off an' cried-bitter."

She left him, moving cautiously, not taking her eyes off him. She got a bedroom candlestick from the sideboard and lighted it, holding it to him.

"Which way?" he asked. He looked round the room, which was a trap. "Why, you're half asleep a'ready

some up."

He kicked off his boots; then he threw himself upon the bed to wait; but he was dog tired and slept heavily at once. When he awoke it was dawn. God had called the world. He crept out and listened at her door; there was not a sound. He went downstairs, carrying his shoes. Almost impalpably he opened the parlor door, his firm young hand moving as a mist.

He saw her fast asleep upon the sofa. She was sitting there and had doubled

She said, looking at him very hard and speaking pathetically, "I'll seem more like your mother than your missus when we goos ter church ter-morrer.'

"We going to church, then?"

"Course, dear. Christmas mornin'. An' you wun't be your old self till you've had a proper night's rest. I can see thet."

Her eyes sad, keen-roamed over his confused face.

"No, I sha'n't. You're right." He He took the jamb of the door in his hand and started to shut it. "I'm dropping off as I stand. Good night-Beetrus."

He meant to slip out of the house as soon as ever he could, directly she was safe off to sleep. That must be her bedroom on the other side of the landing. She was mad, and he must get away from her. He felt sleepy, confused, afraid. He did not mind if he walked the wild country roads in the storm all night, or if he huddled up in the shed; he must get out of the cottage—and that was all.

VOL. CXLIV.-No. 860.-29

head was fallen on her wide breast, her hands were linked in her ample lap. He could see her brow and the white lids of her eyes. She appeared to him inscrutable. and he developed a reverence for her-that and a healthy young terror.

Standing before her for a moment, he said, with a soft jeer on his lip, as it moved cautiously:

"Well, good-by, Beetrus!"

Last night he had been hungry, weary, spent. This morning he was fed and rested, so he knew that he was young, and that therefore the world was at his foot for him to kick whichever way he fancied. She had given him food last night, that—and lots to think about.

As quick as he could he got the food together, stuffing it into a clean sack which he found in the washhouse. There was no theft in this, for hadn't she said that she always gave to the first tramp that called? Everything went into the sack except the crackers.

Upon the floor at her feet were the caps which he and she had worn last night—one blue, one pink. It did not seem true that he had sat and played the fool with this big woman last night!

When he opened the cottage door frosty air of Christmas morning kissed his cheek. Church bells were ringing for communion.

He went away with a sackful of good food; yet that was the least thing that he carried, for she had taught him things. He whistled as he went and tried to feel cheerful, callous. Yet the weight of her tragedy and her tenderness lay upon

him. He suspected that somewheredeeper than he had dug―lay that eternal zest to living, which was love.

When she woke up, Martha Daborn, the wheelwright's wife, was standing over her, looking concerned, yet waggish. She said:

"Your old man come back, then, Beetrus? I see the dirty plates as I come through. An' there 'ain't a bit o' food left in the place."

Beatrice sat up, and her eyes comprised the room. At first she seemed scared; then she laughed, that laugh which nobody liked.

"My young man he come home," she said, proudly. "He don't look a day older. Might be my son. I reckon he've gone agen, to jine his ship. Told me larst night he wur paid off; hadn't got the heart to tell me the truth. George wur allus tender. But he'll be back next Christmas Eve an' then he'll

stay fer good an' all." She stared at the clock, then stood on her feet. "Nearly ten. I nivir!"

"Yes, an' I bin waitin' fer you ter draw them turkey giblets, fer you've got wrists stronger 'n a man. Tell you what it is, Beetrus, you'll be murdered one o' these fine days. Why, the door warn't bolted, an' some tramp hev bin in a'ready an' cleared the house."

"My George couldn't bolt it arter him, could he?" Beatrice was unconcerned, cheerful, and quite herself. "You wait a bit while I have a sluice down at the sink. Fancy me fallin' off like thet an' nivir takin' my clothes off!"

When the wheelwright's wife was alone in the parlor she picked up the paper caps and folded them.

"Make believe! Beetrus gits worse instid o' better," she said, thoughtfully. "But leave her alone Christmas Eve an' she'll come round by Christmas mornin'. Ready, Beetrus?"

HE chief characteristic of our age is man's independence of his immediate surroundings. The savage necessarily must depend upon his immediate neighborhood for the necessities of life. Some barter and commerce developed during the barbarian ages, but in the absence of any efficient means of transportation, even up to fairly recent times, such commerce could deal with luxuries and rare articles only, but for the common necessities of life man was still dependent on his immediate surroundings, and a local crop failure meant famine and starvation.

The great French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century made man politically free, changed him from a serf to a citizen; and so unfettered the ability, initiative, and ambition of all. The invention of the steam engine advanced man from a machine doing the mechanical labor of the world to a machine tender, directing the machines capable of doing the work of thousands of men, and set him mechanically free. The higher intelligence and knowledge required for this demanded education of the masses of the people, and so gave them an intellectual freedom which the illiterate man of former ages could not have possessed.

Thus came the great and rapid development of our modern industrial and engineering civilization, which is characterized by the almost complete independence of man of his surroundings. No matter where we live, whether in the center of the great metropolis, or in a small village far out in the wilderness, anything that man and earth produce anywhere, is available to us; the mail takes the order at our house, and in due

time, by steamship and railway train, by express company or mail, it is delivered at our house.

This development of the means of transportation of materials by the steamship lines which cover the oceans, the railways which cover the continents with a network of tracks, the system of express and mail service, has been the great achievement of the nineteenth century, the foundation of our civilization, as we are forcibly made to realize whenever the transportation system breaks down in the slightest degree, as it did during the last years.

But civilization depends on two things-materials and energy. As vitally important as materials, from the necessities of life to its luxuries, is energy, or power, as we often call it. That is, the thing which makes the wheels go around, which drives the factories and mills, which in the steam locomotive carries us far better and faster than our feet could; which, in the rays of the electric light or the gas flame, lights our homes and turns night into day; which, in the heat of coal burning in the stove, warms our houses and makes our climate inhabitable, and in our homes fetches and carries, cools the air by the fan motor or cooks our food, drives the sewing machine or the ice-cream freezer, sweeps and dusts by the vacuum cleaner, washes, irons, and does more and more of the manual labor, and can and will do still more in the future to make life agreeable and efficient.

But while the methods of supply, transportation, and distribution of materials have been developed highly by the transportation systems, which were the great work of the last century, we

are still backward in the energy supply for the needs of man; and this is the present great limitation of our civilization which the engineer is endeavoring to

overcome.

We cannot make or create energy. Thus, we have to take it from where we find it in nature, and bring it where we need it. The two big stores of energy in nature are in the coal mine and the waterfall, the former supplying the chemical energy of fuel (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.), which is set free as heat energy by combustion, and the latter sup plying the hydraulic or mechanical

energy.

The first problem which we meet, then, is how to transport the energy from its source to the place where we need it. We can do this well enough with the chemical energy of coal, by carrying the coal in railway train or steamship, and so we are doing, though it is rather an inefficient way, as it costs more to bring the coal from the mine to the consumer than it does to mine it. But mechanical energy, as the hydraulic energy of water power, we cannot transport as such at all (or “transmit,” as we usually term the transportation of energy), and before the advent of electrical energy transmission the water powers were practically useless. The only way was for the user of energy to locate at the water power. But the place where the water power is found is rarely suitable for an industry, hardly ever for a big city, and these are the two largest users of energy. It was the electrical engineer who made the water powers of use, by changing, "transforming" the hydraulic energy of the waterfall into electric energy, to send it over the electric transmission line to the distant places where energy is needed, and distribute it as electric energy.

There are only two kinds or forms in which energy can be economically carried over long distances, "transported" or "transmitted"-as the chemical energy of fuel by the railway car or steamship, and as electrical energy by the

transmission line; and when from your train window you see the coal cars going by or the electric transmission lines flying past, you realize that both fulfill the same function, carrying the energythat is, the power of doing things, on which our civilization depends, from its source where it is found in nature to the place where we need it.

But, while fuel energy and electrical energy both can be economically transported or transmitted, there is a vast difference in them when we arrive at the destination and meet the problem of distributing and transforming the energy into that form which we need-heat energy to warm our homes and cook our food; light energy to extend the hours of daylight; mechanical energy to fetch and carry, to bring us to and from our work or pleasure, to turn the wheels of industry, drive the motor, whether the small fan motor of a fraction of a cat's power which cools our room, or the giant motor in the steel mill, which with the power of ten thousands of horses squashes steel ingots of tons of weight, as though they were soft putty, into the shape of rails to carry the train, or steel beams to support our building structures, or span the rivers as bridges.

We can change the chemical energy of fuel into heat by burning it in our stoves and furnaces in a fairly simple, though rather inefficient, manner.

But when we wish to convert the fuel energy into mechanical power we can do it efficiently and economically only in very large units, in the huge and highly complicated steam-turbine stations of ten thousands or hundred thousands of horse power; and we cannot mechanically distribute this energy except in a highly wasteful and inefficient manner, by shafts and belts and countershafts.

If we want light, we have to select special fuels, as kerosene, or first convert the fuel energy of coal into that of gas in gas works, and distribute the gas; and even then we are far from the convenience and cleanliness of the electric light.